Life Senator Sergio Pininfarina, Honorary Chairman of the Pininfarina Group, passed away last night at his home in Turin. Aside from several industrial designs that Pininfarina and his design firm have received honors for, the people of the automotive world will surely remember him as a legendary car designer. Pininfarina has worked with several car manufacturers during his career and is famously remembered as the man responsible for the design of several iconic Ferrari and Maserati vehicles specifically the Testarossa, Enzo, F12berlinetta and the 2003 Maserati Quattroporte.

Aside from designing cars, the design firm bearing his surname Pininfarina, have been responsible for several facilities in Italy including the first 1:1 scale Wind Tunnel in Italy on 1972. That and some more of his personal achievements have earned him and his company several honorable awards.

Sergio Pininfarina himself received numerous honours. The major ones are: he was appointed “Cavaliere del Lavoro” by the President of the Italian Republic (1976); Légion d’Honneur (Chevalier, 1979, and Officier, 1997), “Honorary Royal Designer for Industry” (1983), Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (1988), Designer Lifetime Achievement Award (1991), Super Trophée de l’”Automobile Magazine” (1992), “Guglielmo Tagliacarne” award (1994) , the “Italy in the World” award (1994), the Career Award Compasso d’Oro (1995), the “France-Italie” Award (1997), “Lion d’Oro” (1998), “Trophée du design” (1998), Premio Leonardo (1999), “Head of the Century in the International Automotive Hall of Fame” (2001), the award “Torino libera” (2001), Business and Culture Award (2003), Palme d’Or du Festival Automobile International (2005), Automotive Hall of Fame of Dearborn, Michigan (2007); European Automotive Hall of Fame of Geneva (2008).

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He also received 4 Honorary Degrees: in 1993 the Honorary Degree in Economics and Commerce by the LUISS-Rome; in 2002 the one of the Royal College of Art of London and the one in Industrial Design of the Polytechnic of Milano; in 2004 the one as Doctor of Fine Arts from the College for Creative Studies-CCS of Detroit.